Sunday, July 11, 2010

World To Grow Faster Than Dodoland in 2010

The IMF is now forecasting the world output to expand at 4.6% instead of its April forecast of 4.2%. So things are getting better overall across the world. Except in Mauritius where growth forecasts have been revised downwards from 4.6% to 4.1%. That after receiving record amounts of FDI for 4 straight years.

I think he has no choice but to restore our progressive tax structure because the flat tax is simply not sustainable and besides creates a lot more inequality while leaving government with too little money to fix our national problems.Am sure you remember Sithanen's August 2005 report entitled "Setting the stage for robust stage". He needed robust growth to compensate for consistently reduced tax receipts (MRA can't significantly improve its collection efficiency forever). He never got robust growth rates for the past five years so the situation has spun out of control. Although Ramgoolam had no choice but to dump the bean-counter the other half of the toxic duet needs to be sacked and a little bit of sanity restored to policy-making in our country. It is clear that neither Mansoor or Sithanen understands anything about policy-making and they have taken Mauritius for a big toxic ride while Ramgoolam has been busy entertaining us with his dumb stories about his father.

Should go deeper into the analysis and will notice that our beloved country has not fared that bad bearing the footprints of late FM, RS's action plan. For info, the growth rate is far to be a balanced one where EU and US are within a 2-3% range, and China and India hovering over 10%. Anybody will interpret the growth figure as he wishes depending on the way he wants the bashing of x,y,z to be structured but my honest take , is that we should be satisfied with such prediction based on our open economy so dependent on economic partners not faring well within their domestic economies, and now stating that FDI amount should have changed 'la donne', that another debate which no one has the answer for sure

@The Banker: Singapore is a more open economy than us and their 2010 growth forecast is 13-15%. We're not going to rebound as they are because RS and AM have broken far too many springs of the Mauritian economy. That was obvious because we didn't have to wait for the financial meltdown to go into a recession. No, the toxic duet put a majority of Mauritians in a slump back in 2006. Don't pretend you don't know what happened in the US when they tried the supply-side crap back in the 1980s.

@ Sanjay - Singapore's proximity with the booming asian giants has something to do with the 2-digit forecasted growth where its effective financial sector and annexed port / international trade activities are contributing massively to the growth forecast, should also add that Singapore has a qualified man power to tap opportunities as and when they arise, like in current environment, whereas we have been investing in a laureate system, where 70% of them, just say bye bye to Mauritius, 'diplome en poche', as per last audit report

@The Banker: There are a lots of countries that are within a stone's throw of the two Asian giants. So why don't they grow by that much?FYI, Singapore has had double-digit growth when China and India were not growing fast. We certainly can't blame SGP for sitting on our hands, can we? We can certainly blame RS and AM for the worst economic management ever. But not as much as Ramgoolam.Btw, how much is the Rs5 billion gift that Sithanen bestowed on the dead sugar industry contributing to our growth? Any idea?

@The Banker: As far as non-oil domestic exports go in 2009 SGP exported 50% more to the EU than it did to China. Incidentally exports to US were a little more than those to the middle empire. Check sa enn ti kut. And I guess you have seen that the combined exports of US and EU have been 3 times more important than exports to China in the 3 years ending in 2008. EU and US trade in 2009 were also 30% and 40% less than their 2006 levels. So the proximity argument doesn't seem to hold that much water.

@Sanjay and The Banker:The recent economic growth in Singapore is mostly down to its manufacturing-export in two main sectors. The first was in life science, which contributed to a significant growth increase in the first quarter in the year. Now, it is the manufacturing in the semiconductor industry that is pulling up the growth rate.

Singapore experienced one of its worst recession at the paek of the economic nadir, some 4-5% negative growth and doing simple maths, a pick up in Asia, coupled with the multiplier effect can only produce such two-digit growth within a highly dynamic economy and region, so nothing hyper natural in that case and again should go deeper in analysis instead of some holistic approach to some figures. I wonder to what extent the bashing would have gone if ever Mauritius had experienced a negative growth of -0.01% during the years when RS has been FM ....

Wasting energy on people suffering from selective amnesia, or ingrained servility should I say, is indeed laudable. You are a brave boy Sanjay! I would rather see you devote your wits on more comparative charts to ridicule the Tinawallahs and expose their lies.

While the eurozone is nearing disaster and unemployment hitting hard (1/3 of UK graduates resorting to manual jobs and China is also set to suffer from falling European demand despite its low production costs, should Mauritius continue to concentrate its diversification process on Chinese and Indian tourists only? Why not the high-growth (high net worth ‘nouveaux riches’) countries like Macau, Mongolia, or even Singapore…?